


Ghosts

by interabang



Category: Heroes (TV 2006)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-26
Updated: 2008-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26434399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interabang/pseuds/interabang
Summary: While being held in Level Five, Sylar starts to see all the people - and victims - from his past.





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for megmatthews20' Halloween Meme. Prompt: Sylar is haunted by the past. Many, many thanks to [barhaven](https://barhaven.livejournal.com) for beta-ing this!

_Gabriel._

_Gabriel..._

“That’s not my name anymore.”

“Oh, _Gabriel._ ” The pale, small woman kneels down to match his level. He’s still lying down somewhere in Level Five, connected to the IV that’s connected to the bag that’s dripping with liquid he doesn’t even need anymore.

“I _said_ that’s not my name.” He tries to sound as menacing as he can, but instead his voice comes out in a soft, ragged whisper.

“We had such a difficult time coming up with a name for you,” Virginia says. “When we saw you, we knew… _I_ knew what your name would be. You looked like an angel, when I first held you in my arms.”

Sylar turns his head away from her. Perhaps if he ignores her empty words, she’ll disappear.

“You were such a quiet boy,” his mother continues. “So quiet, and fragile. I always knew you were —”

“Special.” Sylar’s eyes flicker when he hears the voice beside him change. He turns over, and comes face-to-face with Chandra Suresh.

“Do you know how exhilarated I was when you showed me your abilities?” the dead scientist asks him. “Of course, I was shocked at first, but you... you validated my work, and I was so _eager_ to get back to my colleagues and boast about my findings. Then, well, I realized just how much I was getting in over my head with you, and —”

“You’re not real.” Sylar’s voice is soft and weak. “I killed you a long time ago.”

“Not _so_ long ago, really,” Chandra corrects him. “Just think about it for a moment. You were a bright young man with a passion for your craft, and therein lay your self-hatred. You loathed what you did, yet you cherished it at the same time. But your stolen ability…” Suresh chuckles mirthlessly at his last words. “You cherished that even more, didn’t you? Even more than human life.”

He shifts slightly. When he does, Sylar realizes that the professor’s neck is snapped at an unnatural angle, looking the way he did after he’d been murdered.

“You’re not real,” Sylar repeats.

“What about me?” This next voice causes Sylar to switch his focus toward the foot of the table. The large woman he killed, the one whose power he couldn’t take, stands before him with her head smashed open. Blood oozes down her wide cheeks, but she doesn’t move to wipe away the trails.

“ _I_ was real,” she starts, drawing her arms up to cross them over her chest defiantly. “Or, I was “real” in the sense of existing. But you took that away from me, when I could have offered you anything you wanted. You know, you _really_ have some self-control issues.”

Sylar’s eyes widen, but only by a millimeter. He won’t let this hallucination get the better of him.

“Not to mention his issues with women,” another voice calls out on Sylar’s right. He glances over to see the thin woman with dark, short hair looking down at him with a sneer on her lips, and half of her face missing. “Such a violent coward. I bet it’s because he never got any action when he was a pathetic little recluse.”

Her mouth splits into a grin, and he can see the blood dripping from her gums.

“I could not tell,” another voice calls out, this time tinged with an accent. Maya steps out from the far corner of the cell, and there’s a bullet still lodged in her chest from when Sylar shot her.

“You were so good to me, so gentle, _Gabriel_. How could you treat me that way and not feel anything?”

Her eyes begin to blacken. When they do, the painter appears right next to Maya. The top of his head is missing, and Sylar can see the folds of his grey matter.

“Oh, but you felt something when you killed _me_ , didn’t you?” Isaac asks, his voice thin and dry, like paper. “You were disappointed not to hear me beg for my life. You knew that I wasn’t afraid of you.”

“ _I_ was,” Peter mutters from behind Sylar’s head. Sylar can hear the blood pattering onto the floor, from the shard of glass wedged in the empath’s brain. 

Peter leans over to block Sylar’s view of the ceiling, and he continues, his face pale and his rust-colored lips cracked and dry. “I was afraid of you, yeah, but I’m not anymore. I’m just like you. _Special_. I could be exactly the way you are now, if I just applied myself.

“I could be a monster, like you.”

“Shut up.” Sylar says, but it sounds more like a wheeze than a command.

Peter shakes his head mockingly; he moves away to reveal a figure crawling upside-down on the ceiling. The body is shaped like a human – two legs and two arms – but the skin on the back looks scabbed and shell-like in patches. The thing carefully places its claw-like hands on the stone so that it positions itself directly above Sylar, and then it speaks in a terrible, muddled voice:

**“I’m already becoming like you, Sylar. Every day, more and more like you. You know what the ironic thing is?”**

There’s a lull in the cell, and Sylar can feel the eyes of his victims boring into him. He doesn’t answer the creature above, but he can’t take his eyes away from the disgusting sight. 

The monster draws in a deep, labored breath. **“You made me this way,”** it says, and then turns around to lock its soulless eyes with Sylar’s.

Sylar snaps his lids shut. He doesn’t want to look anymore, doesn’t want to see the damage he’s done. Yet he can hear them still; more and more of them appearing beside him and whispering their accusations, threats, and predictions of his fate.

“The best way for him to go is, if his powers were stolen like ours were. That’d be some righteous payback, right here.” The mechanic from Montana.

“Naw, that’d be too easy for him,” the waitress from Texas says in her sweet Southern drawl. “He should jus’ stay right here until he wastes away – that’ll teach him a lesson!”

The next person is fiddling with a chain on his jeans. “No, see, the way he’s doing things now is going to – it’s going to, ah, get him in the end, right? Because he’s, like, going to end up getting killed by someone soon anyway. Does that make sense?”

“It’d be even better if he found an ability he couldn’t deal with.” This voice is harder to place. Is it Brian Davis? 

“He already has it,” a new voice says, and the murmuring in the cell instantly stops. Sylar can feel a new presence over his head; can smell his cologne, can already _see_ the watch strapped on his wrist.

“Oh, Gabriel,” his father says in a disappointed tone. “I always knew your mother and I made a mistake with you.”

Sylar wants to speak, but his throat tightens up, like he’s being choked. Suffocated in a room filled with brainless corpses and blood-spattered ghosts that all begin to talk at once again. The creature on the ceiling twists into circles above Sylar’s head, its claws scratching against the concrete, and suddenly, it’s all too much for Sylar to bear.

“I always knew you shouldn’t have ever been born,” his father tells him, his voice coming out clearer than the others’, and Sylar keeps his eyes shut tight.

When the door to the cell opens, Sylar remains in his prone position. He awaits the words of the next speaker with his eyes still closed, and the ghosts’ fading whispers in his ears.


End file.
